The Phoenix
by BonesBBLover
Summary: Set following "Spark of Life" season 5 , when Sophia says "I heard you used to be a funny guy. Don't lose that"; Greg begins to question himself and the way his life has changed since he left the comfort of the lab. Nick/Greg slash.
1. Chapter 1

For prompt_in_a_box #17: "You meant to make me happy, make me sad, want to make it better so bad" (Bottle it Up)

Sophia's words kept echoing in the back of Greg's mind, repeating over and over in a loop, a broken record stuck on one repeating line—"I heard you used to be a funny guy."

In the empty apartment, the words only seemed to ring more true. 'Used to be a funny guy… used to be.' the words haunted him as he trolled the apartment for something from that point in his life, when he was a carefree lab rat, before his vision had been jaded by the harsh realities of humanity.

The closet; he was sure he would find some shred of evidence in the closet. A bright red and orange silk shirt, his favorite gaudy gold polyester shirt that he found for thirty-five cents at a thrift store back in college, the daisy-dukes he had to wear to the LVPD Halloween party a number of years back after losing a bet… something. Greg knew he could find what he was looking for hanging next to Nick's conservative black, gray, and blue hues, but all he could seem to find was his own subdued collection of shirts and pants. No flashy gold or orange, the only red being his old Stanford sweatshirt.

'When did I get so boring?' Greg wondered, falling backwards onto the bed he shared with Nick. 'When did I become that guy? That guy, the conservative, serious worker who would rather spend his time at home with his boyfriend, watching the Discovery Channel, instead of going out on the club circuit on his night off.' The thought spooked Greg—he was becoming everything he had been fighting his entire life. The gaudy, bright clothes fighting conformity within the workplace, his sunny and bouncy personality belaying the darkness and serious tones of adulthood. In spite of himself, he had become that guy, and he didn't like it one bit.

"You used to be a funny guy…" the words reverberated off the walls of the bedroom, no longer Sophia's haunting voice, but his own accusatory one.

The case had been hard on him earlier that day, hard on all of them, but Greg's self-realization only added fuel to that fire. Fire, what a bad analogy after the case he had been working, but that's exactly what it was. Fire was a necessary means of destruction, of killing off the old brush to usher in the new growth, of destroying what something has become to take it back to the beginning, a phoenix reborn from its ashes. Greg knew that it was his time, his chance, to catch flame and go back to the beginning, to find himself, to regain his lost identity.

In a split-second decision, Greg scribbled a note and made three phone calls as he walked out the door, one to a taxi company, one to Grissom, and one to an old friend of his.

***

Three hours later, while Nick was still in the field working through a double-shift, Greg was stepping off a plane into the blinding sun of Los Angeles.

"Sunny!" Greg waved at his old colleague as he exited security, hugging her warmly as he struggled to keep hold of his bag and her at the same time.

"Hey Greg," Sunny's smile radiated her warmth and happiness at seeing Greg back in LA for the first time since he had moved to Vegas more than six years earlier. "I'm so glad you could make it! I was starting to think you were ignoring my emails," she teased, her keen eye taking in his somewhat disheveled appearance.

"Not ignoring you, just busy," he assured her, releasing her from the hug and walking out towards the parking garage. "But I did make time to come all the way down here just to see you," Greg teased, bumping her with his shoulder like they used to when they were younger.

Sunny bumped him back, her voice light but hinting that she knew that there was more to his re-appearance than he was letting on, "I'm glad you could make time for little ol' me in that busy schedule of yours."

"Actually, it was more because Jenna begged me to come down here," he teased, "You were just the added bonus."

"Did you call your mom yet?" Sunny asked, opening the trunk of her hybrid so Greg could drop his bag in.

"No, not yet," he replied, climbing into the passenger seat. "I just decided to come down a few minutes before I called you."

"Really?" she asked curiously, "You don't have anyone you have to run things passed before you take off?"

"I let everyone know," Greg said definitively, successfully ending the conversation. He didn't want Sunny asking too many questions about why he had decided to leave Vegas for a while, because then he would have to think about Nick and the lab and things he'd rather not think about while he was in sunny California only a few short miles from the ocean.

Adeptly weaving her way through airport traffic and heading into downtown, Sunny let the conversation drop, making a mental note to bring it up again later when Greg was less defensive. "Do you want to crash at my place and get some sleep, or are you okay to just go into work?" she asked after a few minutes of silence.

"I slept a little on the plane," he spoke more to himself than to his colleague. "Let's just go into the lab."

"Alrighty," Sunny glanced over at her friend, taking a moment to observe him while he stared vacantly out the window. "You look good, Greg," she announced, squeezing his knee lightly before placing her hand back on the steering wheel. His normally wild hair was cut shorter, flattened down with the gels he used to use to stand it up in crazy directions; his bright shirts replaced with a nice blue button up and fitted jeans. He looked older, more weary, like he had taken the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that worried her.

Choosing to ignore the comment because he didn't necessarily agree with it, the CSI tried to find all the things that had changed since he left LA. Surprisingly, there weren't many, especially as they moved closer and closer to the lab. "They finally finished the work on the 10," he observed absently, noticing the lack of orange construction cones closing down the left two lanes. "I thought they were going to be working on that until the world ended."

"They did," Sunny laughed, "When the new mayor was elected it felt like the world had ended."

Sunny's laughter was contagious, infecting Greg even through the gloom surrounding him, causing him to laugh. "Finally, someone doing something good in this town," he grinned at her, the familiar sparkle in his eyes.

"Thank god," she agreed as they pulled into a parking spot on the street. "Because that just cut thirty minutes off our drive."

The pair was still laughing as they made their way into the building, stopping at the front desk only long enough for Greg to pick up his name badge and access key. Their next stop was the fourth floor DNA lab, where Greg ran into his old boss.

"Greg Sanders, as I live and breathe," Jenna greeted him with a heavy southern accent that had faded noticeably in the last six years. "I never thought I'd see you in these halls again."

"You just caught me at a good time," he conceded, giving her a hug. "It doesn't look like much has changed around here."

"Oh, you know, new equipment, new faces, that's about it really," Jenna gave him her best motherly smile. "There's already a pile of backed up work on your desk."

"Ah, that's the Jenna we all know and love," Greg grinned, shaking his head in amusement as he headed down the hall to his old workstation. It was like coming home, he noted, walking the halls of his old stomping grounds in the FBI lab, his smile coming easily as he waved at people he recognized and introduced himself to those he didn't. Just an hour in LA had already lifted a weight off his chest he hadn't realized he was carrying.

He laughed as he slid his access key through the lock, already able to see that Jenna was going to milk him for all he was worth while he was visiting, if that was any indication by the week's worth of work already piled on his work station. He happily noted that everything was exactly where he had left it before he had moved away, as if the office had been frozen in time, no one disrupting his space in six years time. Even his favorite green coffee mug was still sitting upside down to the right of the computer monitor, not a trace of dust marking the passage of time since he had last set it down there to dry at the end of a long day. Flipping on the lights and machines to start warming up, Greg easily fell into his old routine, his mind comfortable in the familiarity.

He worked quickly and efficiently, sorting the paperwork and files into separate case piles and starting tests. Greg worked quietly with no distractions, unaware of the uncharacteristic silence filling his lab, his normal loud rock music forgotten. Since being promoted to a CSI he had no need to blast his music anywhere other than the car, the need for the distracting music having been left as part of his old life as a lab tech.

Sunny and Jenna stood together outside his lab for a few moments, watching him work in silence with no crazy dancing or loud music coming from inside. It was as if Greg had finally grown up a little, but he wasn't the same Greg who had left them to work in the lab in Las Vegas, almost as if he was an empty shell of his former self.

"What happened to him up there?" Jenna asked, one eyebrow raised as her former employee kept himself bent over the machines, not even looking up to notice the two women standing in the window watching him.

"I don't know," Sunny admitted, worry filling her voice, "I really don't know."

"The last I heard, he was living with his boyfriend and had just passed his proficiency exam to be a CSI," Jenna offered, baffled by the change in Greg's demeanor since she had last spoken to him on the phone. "He was so excited… what would make him want to go back to lab work?"

"Something with the boyfriend?" Sunny asked, unsure herself as to what had caused the change in her friend. "If he did anything to hurt Greg, I'll kill him myself," she promised, fiercely protective over the lab rat-turned-CSI.

"I don't think that's it," Jenna said, placating her colleague with a hand on the shorter woman's arm to lead her away from the window. "But I'm sure we'll find out. He's here for two weeks, after all."

Eight hours later, after Sunny had finally pulled Greg away from his lab with promises of Korean barbeque, the girls were no closer to finding the answers to their questions.

At the same time, Nick was just beginning to ask his own questions when he arrived home from a double-shift expecting to find his lover asleep in their bed, but only finding a note scribbled in Greg's chicken scratch:

_Nicky,_

_Went to help another lab with some back-logged paperwork and cases. Should be back in two weeks. I'll call you when I can._

_Greg._


	2. Chapter 2

For prompt_in_a_box #27: "But send me the miles and I'll be happy to follow you Love" (Many the Miles)

_Nicky,_

_Went to help another lab with some back-logged paperwork and cases. Should be back in two weeks. I'll call you when I can._

_Greg._

***

Nick rubbed his tired eyes, trying to make sense of Greg's note. Greg's notes, emails, and text messages all tended to be long-winded, like his love when he talked incessantly. He was always gushing with information, mostly unnecessary information, but the one time Nick needed information, Greg decided to be terse and to the point. No information on where he went, no contact information, no "I'll miss you," or "I love you," or even a "Goodbye". Nothing. Just twenty-six short words that weren't enough to tell him anything of substance.

Was he planning this trip? Did he request time off and not tell me? Did he buy a plane ticket? Did he even tell Grissom? Why didn't he tell me he was going somewhere? Where is he? Questions ran rampant through Nick's mind, more questions than Nick had answers to; questions that Nick _should_ have answers to as the boyfriend.

Nick hit speed-dial number one for the fifth time since he got home, and once again there was no answer, just the voice of his lover informing him that he had reached Greg Sanders and to please leave a message. Worried, and more than slightly annoyed, Nick jabbed at the 'end call' button on his phone, using all of his restraint not to throw the phone across the room. It wasn't like Greg to ignore his calls.

Needing an answer to at least one of his questions, Nick hit speed-dial number three and waited impatiently for Grissom to answer. Fully aware that his supervisor would be asleep at this time of day, Nick didn't care because all he wanted was answers as to where Greg disappeared to and why.

"Grissom," the sleepy voice came over the line, causing Nick to fight his worry over Greg's absence.

"Grissom," he said slowly, giving the man a chance to wake up and giving himself a moment to calm his voice. "It's Nick. I was wondering if Greg requested some time off recently, and if you knew where he was going. I got a really weird note from him."

On the other side of Vegas, Grissom rolled back over in bed, thankful it wasn't a call to a scene. "Nick," the older man sighed, "Greg contacted me earlier. He had some vacation time built up that he needed to take, and his help was requested at another lab for the next two weeks so I told him that he could go. Why?"

"No reason," Nick answered quickly, trying to cover up his mistake of calling Grissom with feigned indifference. "It was just a very odd to get a note from Greg since it didn't say much of anything, and I couldn't get in touch with him on his cell."

"Go to bed, Nick," Grissom tried to disguise a yawn on his end of the line, "You just got off a double and you have to be at work in a few hours."

"Okay, thanks, Grissom," Nick wrapped up the call, clicking end and dropping his phone onto the kitchen counter.

Pacing the length of the living room Nick tried in vain to calm his mind, failing as the questions circled and multiplied as minutes became hours. Every so often he dialed Greg's number with the same result, until he was dialing it only to hear the recorded message in his lover's voice.

"Greg, it's me again," Nick sighed, "please call me back as soon as you get this. I'm worried."

Unable to calm himself enough to sleep, Nick struggled with the idea of taking a shower. The warm water might be enough to calm him and let the exhaustion take over, but he might miss Greg's call while in the shower. Choosing to turn his ringer up as loud as possible and set it on the edge of the sink, Nick got into the shower, the room seeming larger and more empty than usual without Greg standing at the sink getting ready for the day. The warm water ran over his shoulders, easing away the tension of the double-shift, but unable to relieve the worry about Greg's well-being. In the last two years they hadn't gone more than ten hours without at least texting each other and the separation was weighing on him heavily.

By the time he got out of the shower thirty minutes later there were still no calls to his cell phone. In an effort to quickly get dressed and out of the empty bedroom that had once felt so warm and inviting but now only seemed oppressive and lonely, Nick failed to notice the absence of his old Texas A&M sweatshirt in the closet. Nor did he notice the closed lid of Greg's laptop that was still radiating heat from its place on the dresser.

Once back in the relative safety of the living room and kitchen areas, Nick decided he would try one more time to get in touch with his boyfriend. After that, it was up to Greg to call him back. Standing in front of the refrigerator, Nick dialed the number for Greg's mom that was stuck to the metal with a strawberry-shaped magnet, in the off chance he had gone back to California.

"Hello?" a pleasant voice answered on the second ring, startling Nick from his thoughts.

"Oh, um, hi, Mrs. Sanders," Nick stuttered, stumbling over his words as he spoke to his boyfriend's mother for the first time. "This is Nick Stokes, I'm a friend of Greg's."

"Oh, hello Nick," she seemed surprised to be getting a call from him, and why wouldn't she be? It wasn't like Greg's friends called his mother out of the blue all the time.

"Hi, um," he continued struggling to form a complete, coherent thought. "I was wondering if you've heard from Greg recently."

"No, I haven't. Is everything alright? Is Greg hurt? Where is he?" Greg's mom was beginning to get worried, her voice getting higher with each question, and Nick kicked himself for making her panic.

"No, no, ma'am, he's fine," he tried to reassure her. "He took a couple weeks off to help out at another lab, but he didn't tell me where. I was wondering if he had gone back to California and had contacted you, because I can't seem to get in touch with him," he rushed through his words, trying to make it sound as if they were nothing more than friends. "I just had an important question for him about a case we worked a few weeks ago."

"Oh," it was obvious she had calmed down from his words. "No, I'm sorry son, but I can't help you. I haven't talked to Greg in over two weeks. If I do hear from him, I'll be sure to tell him that you called, though," she promised. "I have to go now, dinner is done and I have to get it out of the oven."

"Thank you," Nick managed to get out before the line clicked off and he was left listening to dead air. That was odd.


	3. Chapter 3

"Greg, thank god," Maggie Sanders sighed, hanging up the phone and wrapping her grown son in a tight hug. "You had me worried."

Taller than his mother by more than a head, Greg stooped low to hug her back just as tightly, his head resting on her shoulder. "I'm fine. Mom," he tried to assure her. "I just needed a little vacation time."

"Then why are your friends from Vegas calling here looking for you?" she accused, pulling away from him and shaking a wooden spoon up at him. "And saying they don't know where you are?"

"Who called?" he asked, genuinely surprised that someone had called his mother to find him. It wasn't like anyone other than Grissom knew he was in California, and Grissom wouldn't have called unless… "Who was it? Was it Grissom? Is everyone okay? Did something happen?" Greg's voice raised an octave and cracked. He knew he sounded like his mother, her panic attacks were legendary after all, and he had learned from the best.

"It was someone named Nick," she tried to soothe him, setting aside the spoon and placing a warm hand on his arm. "He just had a question about a case and couldn't reach you on your cell. I'm sure everything else is fine, no one is hurt."

"Oh," Greg's panic deflated at the mention of Nick's name. Sliding into one of the chairs lined up against the bar, he rested his head against the cool tile, his heartbeat slowing and breathing deepening as he recovered from even a short panic attack. It was rare he had one anymore, but he could work himself into a frenzy at a moment's notice, especially around his mother. "I'll call him later."

Maggie Sanders was not a stupid woman, she had raised a brilliant boy like Greg at any rate, and so she knew there was something, probably a lot of somethings, Greg wasn't telling her. She knew he would tell her them in his own time, and so she gave him the time he needed, turning her attention instead to the pot on the stove and stirring it. Satisfied the sauce wasn't burning; she filled a glass with water and placed it on the counter in front of the blonde head that was still resting on the counter.

"So what brings you back to LA?" she finally asked after a few minutes of silence. "I clearly remember you saying there was nothing that could get you to come back here, short of someone dying, and I haven't gotten that memo."

He lifted his face from the cool tiles to look at his mother, his normally bright brown eyes dull and lifeless, the bags under them telling of the strain he had been under recently. "Jenna needed some help out here, and I had to take some vacation time, so I might as well get paid to go on vacation, right?" he tried to make a joke, the bad punch-line falling flat, unable to even force himself to smile through it.

Worried about Greg, but knowing that he wasn't going to tell her any more than that right now, she pointed at the water glass. "How about you go take a nap for a little bit," she offered, her motherly instincts kicking in. "I'll come get you for dinner when everyone gets home."

"Yes ma'am," Greg nodded sleepily, reaching for the glass and shuffling out of the kitchen. Now that he was home, the fact that he had been awake for over 48 hours and worked 36 of them was quickly catching up with him, his head hardly touching the pillow before sleep overtook him.

***

Checking that Greg had gone to sleep, she closed his door softly and went back to the kitchen, taking the phone off the cradle and pausing for only a moment before dialing.

*69, she punched into the keypad, lifting the phone to her ear and listening to it ring.

"Hello?" a young man's frantic voice answered the phone, causing her to hesitate. "Greg? Babe? Is that you? Please say something…" the voice pleaded, and Maggie's breath hitched in her lungs. "Greg—" something in his voice, the worry and disappointment, broke her heart.

"Nick?" she asked cautiously, trying not to upset the man any further. "This is Maggie, um, Greg's mom…" she trailed off, unsure of what to say and how to tell this man she had never met that her son was home safe and sound and asleep in his childhood bed, a man whose relationship with her son sounded a lot more serious than co-workers, if the strain in his voice was anything to judge by.

"Oh, I'm, um," Nick's voice faltered, "have you heard from him?"

"Yes," she told him calmly, wondering whether or not to tell him what she knew. "But before I tell you where he is, I need to know what your relationship is with my son."

The question appeared to catch Nick unaware, and he stumbled over his words for a moment before finally sounding coherent, "We're, um, co-workers."

"Son," Maggie said gently, "with the way you answered the phone a few minutes ago, I know that's not the whole truth. I just need to know that I'm not giving information to a stalker or someone who is out to harm him."

There was a heavy sigh over the line, one Maggie recognized as a sound Greg had started making soon after moving to Vegas. Now she knew where he had picked it up from.

"Greg and I are—" he paused, "we… live together."

Not quite the admission she was looking for, but it was obvious that it was hard for the man to admit aloud even though his tone of voice said it for the world to hear. "Are you involved with Greg?" she asked, leading him slowly toward the answer she was looking for.

"Yes ma'am," he replied slowly, a southern twang definitely present in his speech. Yet another mannerism Greg had adopted in Vegas that Maggie could finally attribute to someone. Without prompting, he added, "For about three years now."

"Really," Maggie's voice fell as the realization that there would be no grandchildren reached the forefront of her mind. It wasn't that she was upset that her son had decided to be with a man, she would love him regardless, but there had always been that chance.

"I'm sorry ma'am," Nick tried to retract his statement after hearing the disappointment in her voice, "we weren't sure how or when to tell people. I know this isn't how he wanted you to find out…" there was a panicked edge to his voice, as if he was terrified that he would lose Greg… or that he had already lost him.

"No, no, son," she soothed him, "I'm not upset that he chose to be with you. You sound like a very nice young man who cares a great deal for Greg. He was just trying to spare me the knowledge that I won't have any grandchildren to spoil… he was always reluctant to talk to me about the men in his life, for that reason."

"I'm sorry," the man repeated, "I still wish you hadn't found out this way."

"Don't be sorry, Nick," she tried to reassure him. "You've done nothing besides care for my son."

"Yes ma'am," he repeated, calmer now, but his voice still filled with worry.

"Greg is here," Maggie told him, "he arrived right after you called."

"He is?" Nick's voice cracked slightly, struggling between worry and relief. "Did he say why he was there?"

She smiled softly against the phone, stirring the pot on the stove as she debated over her next words. It was obvious this man loved her son, and worried about him deeply, and that Greg loved him back, if the panic attack from earlier was anything to judge by.

"He's just filling in at his old lab down here for a couple of weeks," she finally said, deciding to try to fix whatever the trouble in this relationship was. "He had to take some vacation from the lab up there, and they really needed some help here, so he came down to assist."

"Oh," Nick sighed in relief, "I'm, just, thank you for telling me."

"Are you having some trouble?" Maggie asked, gently prying to see if Nick would open up to her anymore than he already had.

"Just working too much," Nick sighed, "we don't get to spend much time together anymore. No one at the lab knows we're together, so we keep getting different days off…"

"Do you have vacation time built up as well?" Maggie asked, an idea forming in her mind.

"Yes," Nick replied, her question obviously making him realize what she was thinking. "Do you think he'd want to see me, though? Obviously he left without telling me for a reason."

"Son, I'm sure that wasn't it," she assured him. "Now, when is the earliest you can get down here?"

"I can't get away for a couple more days, but then I've got four off in a row, and I'm sure I can extend that by a few…" his voice was starting to sound hopeful, and Maggie smiled.

"Then why don't you get yourself a plane ticket and call me back when you have the details, dear," she suggested. "We'll work this out, I promise."

"Thank you, ma'am," Nick's voice had finally lost that worried edge. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Maggie, son, call me Maggie."

"Thanks, Maggie," he replied before hanging up.

***

The following days passed in a quickly developed routine that made it seem as if Greg had never left for Vegas. Every morning Greg was up at six, having coffee with his grandparents in the kitchen while he waited for Sunny to pick him up.

At a quarter past seven she pulled up, honked once, and then the pair was off to the lab. All day Greg would be in the DNA lab, working quickly and efficiently, getting through a stack of work that would take most lab techs a week in only four days. Never taking a lunch break, no loud music playing, Greg would only leave his workstation to use the restroom or to get more coffee. At seven in the evening, Sunny would drag him away from his desk and either take him out for dinner or drop him off at his parents' house.

So the routine went for four days, with Sunny and Jenna getting more and more worried about him as every day passed and he didn't talk to them. Sunny had gone so far as to call his mom to ask her about his behavior, but Maggie had uncharacteristically waved her away with nothing more than a "He'll be fine in a few days."

***

On his fifth day in Los Angeles, however, the routine changed.


End file.
